This Week's Voices from Around the World

Comment by Mary Liston Liepold
In the news this week: man-made disasters and women joining forces to make the world new. Though violence rages in many places, today’s reports focus on eastern Congo, where already unbearable conditions have become unimaginable. The international community is understandably concerned that the DRC’s neighbors will be drawn in if the conflict continues. The conventional thinking calls for still more troops—though the Congo already has the world’s largest UN peacekeeping force.
And from the sidelines comes the voice of Barnard political scientist Séverine Autesserre (quoted, to …

Commentary by Molly Mayfield Barbee
It’s finally here—the day after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, 2008. The world has been watching the buildup to this election day, and now we can finally say that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.
This longest, and most expensive, presidential campaign ever had stakeholders all over the globe. Newsweek and the BBC called it the World’s Election. Al Jazeera developed one of their signature photo montages with a dramatic soundtrack to provide its viewers with regular updates. …

Commentary by Mary Liston Liepold
October 31 is Halloween in the Americas, in parts of Western Europe, and, thanks to the reach of both Christianity and US pop culture, in many other places across the globe. In the church calendar All Hallows’ E(v)en(ing), known in Latin cultures as the Day of the Dead, was the eve of the feast of All Saints. It was a time when the boundaries between the realms of life and death seemed temporarily dissolved; when the dead might return home and death itself might be domesticated, …

Comment by Mary Liston Liepold
Yes, the Nobel Prize surprises are over for this year, and the winners got lots of well-deserved press. But October is also the month for The Right Livelihood Awards, popularly known as the Alternative Nobels. Swedish-German journalist and philatelist Jakob von Uexkull sold his business to endow the first awards in 1980 because the six Nobel categories didn’t fully cover the fields of human endeavor that mattered most to him: independent journalism, peacebuilding, and social justice.
This year’s Right Livelihood Awardees are three women—Somali, German, and American—and …

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